Peacemaker’s Alien Invasion Makes Man Of Steel’s Ending Plot Hole Worse
In Peacemaker, a mass invasion of Butterfly spaceships is seen, begging the question: why is there nothing to stop them after all the DCEU has seen?
Warning: Contains spoilers for Peacemaker episode 6.
In Peacemaker episode 6, “Murn After Reading,” an alien invasion makes a plot hole that was created by Man Of Steel’s ending even worse. While Man Of Steel birthed the DCEU, it was not originally planned to be part of a much larger franchise, which might be why DC made so many mistakes with its continuity as the DCEU progressed. Almost a decade after Man Of Steel, Peacemaker is still dealing with the fact that the DCEU never properly addressed the way that film ended.
Man Of Steel saw Henry Cavill’s first appearance as Superman and explored his origin, being sent to Earth after the destruction of Krypton. General Zod was eventually able to escape the Phantom Zone and invaded Earth with a plan that led to him eventually trying to terraform Earth to be more like Krypton in a manner that would wipe out all of humanity in the process. Before Superman was able to put a stop to Zod, the terraforming began and caused a huge amount of damage to Metropolis and was a very public incident.
Man Of Steel left the Earth and the United States government in no doubt about the existence of aliens and the potential threat extraterrestrials could pose to planet Earth. This caused a plot hole when the sequel DCEU movies repeatedly used aliens as their villains, making it clear that no precautions were put in place to prevent a similar thing from happening again. In Peacemaker, it is revealed that an alien species called Butterflies have taken over many hosts around the world for an unknown period of time. This goes a step further in Peacemaker episode 6 when the queen Butterfly, now inside Sophie Song, calls down an entire fleet of Butterfly ships. While a few Butterflies could believably have appeared in the past, this mass alien invasion exacerbates the plot hole that started with Man Of Steel by confirming that the United States clearly still does not have countermeasures in place to counteract an alien invasion despite their past experiences.
The unlikely absence of proper countermeasures in Peacemaker is only compounded by Murn’s ARGUS team and Amanda Waller’s machinations. ARGUS are clearly working on high-level tech and are aware of the Butterflies’ infiltration, so they should have some form of countermeasure in place. A team of four to six people seems woefully inadequate in Peacemaker and the clandestine nature of their operation makes little sense when aliens are a known quantity to civilians in the DCEU. This leaves the DCEU in strong contrast to the MCU where, after threats from Asgard and outer space were perceived, Nick Fury and Iron Man both worked to ensure that the planet had a greater defense system (for better or for worse, in the case of Ultron).
One possible explanation of this post-Man Of Steel plot hole comes from the nature of the Butterfly spaceships themselves. While the Kryptonian spaceships in Man Of Steel were relatively large, each Butterfly spaceship is small enough for Peacemaker to hold in his hands. It is possible that ARGUS and other agencies have countermeasures set up to prevent an alien invasion, but that in Peacemaker even an entire fleet of the tiny ships are small enough to avoid detection. However, the apparent ease with which the Butterflies are able to infiltrate earth still raises serious questions about the DCEU's in-universe security measures.
Peacemaker releases new episodes Thursdays on HBO.